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Dinosaur graveyard as tourist draw

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:56:55 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

The Patagonian region of Argentina, where Calvo has worked for 20 years, has become one of the most active areas of exploration for dinosaur fossils in the world, along with the Gobi Desert in China and the fossil-rich American West. Paleontologists from around the world have been drawn to work in Patagonia. Argentine scientists have unearthed the largest plant-eating dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus, and the largest carnivore, the Giganotosaurus carolinii, which at about 42 feet long was slightly longer and about three tons heavier than the famed Tyrannosaurus Rex found in the United States.

"Argentina has the richest and longest-term record for dinosaurs in all of the Southern Hemisphere, a record from the first to the last dinosaurs," said James Kirkland, a state paleontologist

That record, spanning about 150 million years, is also distinct from that of the Northern Hemisphere

Tags: dinosaur, argentina

Young Iraqis are losing their faith in religion

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:54:29 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.iht.com

After almost five years of war, many young Iraqis, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

"I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us," said Sara Sami, a high school student in Basra. "Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don't deserve to be rulers."

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: "The religion men are liars.

Young people don't believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore."

Tags: iraq, religion

Cheek swab kits successful in recruiting bone marrow donors

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:20:24 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.canada.com

pilot project using free, Web mail-order cheek swab kits to recruit young and ethnically diverse bone marrow stem cell donors, is being deemed such a whopping success that it's now being rolled out across the country.

Ethnic groups are being targeted because 85 per cent of would-be donors in the bone marrow registry are Caucasian, which makes it highly difficult to find matches for ethnic patients. Younger donors are sought because they are the healthiest.

The national program follows a Canadian Blood Services (CBS) project over the past four months in B.C., during which cheek swab kits were mailed to those between the ages of 17 and 50 after they registered for them online.

The kits contain long sticks resembling Q-tips to scrape skin cells from the inside of cheeks. The kit is sent back to CBS in Ottawa; the individual's DNA is then extracted, typed and entered in a database.

Before the cheek swab kits were introduced, would-be donors had to go to a laboratory

Tags: donors, bone marrow, canada